Workload and Rewards

Authors: Curcio, A. A., & Lynch, M. A.

Scholarly productivity reaps tangible internal and external rewards, while the "reward" for excellent faculty committee work performance often is additional committee work. Some faculty members perform substantial institution-sustaining committee work while others are institutional service work “social loafers”. This essay suggests this traditional workload distribution model may be unsustainable. Innovations in legal education are resulting in increased committee work while reductions in full-time faculty at many schools leave fewer faculty members available to do that work.

Authors: Culpepper, D., Misra, J., O'Meara, K., & Jaeger, A. J.

In this article, we describe the work of the Faculty Workload and Rewards Project (FWRP), a National Science Foundation–funded research project aimed at enhancing fairness in the way faculty workloads are taken up, assigned, and rewarded. Our project worked with fifty-three departments in twenty different universities to analyze unit-level workload data, identify equity issues, and develop policies and practices to address them.

Authors: O’Meara, K. Kuvaeva, A., Nyunt, G., Jackson, R. & Waugaman, C.

Guided by research on gendered organizations and faculty careers, we examined gender differences in how research university faculty spend their work time. We used time-diary methods to understand faculty work activities at a microlevel of detail, as recorded by faculty themselves over 4 weeks. We also explored workplace interactions that shape faculty workload. Similar to past studies, we found women faculty spending more time on campus service, student advising, and teaching-related activities and men spending more time on research.

Authors: O’Meara, K., Kuvaeva, A., & Nyunt, G.

Time is a valuable resource in academic careers. Empirical evidence suggests women faculty spend more time in campus service than men. Yet some studies show no difference when relevant variables are included. The primary source of data for most workload studies is cross-sectional surveys that have several weaknesses. This study investigated campus service inequality and factors that predict it at 1 research university using a novel and more comprehensive source of data - annual faculty reports.

Authors: O’Meara, K., Kuvaeva, A., & Nyunt, G.

Time is a valuable resource in academic careers. Empirical evidence suggests women faculty spend more time in campus service than men. Yet some studies show no difference when relevant variables are included. The primary source of data for most workload studies is cross-sectional surveys that have several weaknesses. This study investigated campus service inequality and factors that predict it at 1 research university using a novel and more comprehensive source of data - annual faculty reports.

Authors: Bird, Sharon R., Jacquelyn Litt, and Yong Wang.

Growing awareness of the underrepresentation of women in male-dominated fields like science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), has inspired universities across the United States to examine more carefully their strategies for recruiting, retaining, and promoting women students and faculty. To do so has required assembling personnel to organize and execute data collection, analyses, and interpretation. Not surprisingly, women faculty are the primary participants in this type of work.

Authors: O’Meara, K., Lennartz, C. J., Kuvaeva, A., Jaeger, A., & Misra, J.

For decades, national surveys have shown faculty report high levels of dissatisfaction with the distribution of labor in their departments, especially women and underrepresented minority faculty. Research suggests this dissatisfaction is warranted, as these groups are often engaged in more service, mentoring, and institutional housekeeping than their peers.

Authors: O'Meara, K., Lennartz, C., Kuvaeva, A., Jaeger, A., Misra, J.

For decades, national surveys have shown faculty report high levels of dissatisfaction with the distribution of labor in their departments, especially women and underrepresented minority faculty. Research suggests this dissatisfaction is warranted, as these groups are often engaged in more service, mentoring, and institutional housekeeping than their peers. Despite the ample work revealing workload inequities and their consequences, few studies have examined the backdrop of conditions and practices within which workload is perceived as more or less fair, especially within departments.

Authors: O'Meara, K., Culpepper, D., Misra, J. & Jaeger, A.

This report summarizes the authors’ findings and insights learned from the Faculty Workload and Rewards Project (FWRP), a National Science Foundation ADVANCE-funded action research project. The FWRP worked with 51 departments and academic units to promote equity in how faculty work is taken up, assigned, and rewarded, drawing from theories of behavioral economics and the principles of equity-mindedness. Using a randomized experiment with treatment and control groups, we found that there are actions that academic units can take to promote workload equity.

Authors: O’Meara, K., Beise, E., Culpepper, D., Misra, J., & Jaeger, A.J.

Each year, national surveys show that many faculty members experience dissatisfaction with their workloads (Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education, 2008; Hurtado, Eagan, Pryor, Whang, & Tran, 2012; Jacobs & Winslow, 2004). Several factors contribute to workload dissatisfaction, including perceptions of increased workload and challenges in work–life integration, among others (Bozeman & Gaughan, 2011; Callister, 2006).